


Also-Ran

by anexcessoffeels (headbuttingbears)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gallows Humor, Gen, Injury Recovery, Medical Procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headbuttingbears/pseuds/anexcessoffeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Also-ran (noun): a loser in a race or contest, esp. by a large margin. | "Hospital life does not agree with Frederick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Also-Ran

**Author's Note:**

> Set after 2x07 - Yakimono. Any mistakes, medical or otherwise, are mine.
> 
> For my darling Jenny: the wind beneath my wings, the provider of pictures great and awful, the reader of too many excerpts to count. This is your fault.

Frederick panics when he wakes up. His vision is hazy, dark around the edges; the first thing he sees is a woman with vibrant red hair and she's holding a bloody bandage, turning away from him, and things get the slightest bit mixed up in his mind. He doesn't know where he is, and he can't move his head, and he can't feel his limbs (or really any part of his body). All at once he remembers seeing Freddie Lounds leaning over him with a handful of bloody rags, playing nurse and sopping up as much of his blood as she could because _he was a gusher_ – Abel's own words – and it made it very tricky to play doctor when one couldn't see where to cut.

He whimpers.

There's a beeping sound getting louder and faster as his vision tunnels down, and the woman turns back to him, hands empty and up. She's not Freddie Lounds at all, looks nothing like her, but he doesn't know _who_ she is. Her lips are moving but he can't hear her over the whine of the machines and his own internal screaming as he tries to get up, tries to run, and more people start to swarm in around him like carrion flies on a day-old corpse.

Thankfully he hyperventilates and blacks out, ensuring an abrupt end to a rather stressful first attempt at consciousness.

 

The second time Frederick wakes up he's alone, lying propped up at an angle, and there's a vague ache that's hard to pin down to one location in his body. He lies still, eyes closed, petting the blanket someone had spread over him – it's too soft to be anything other than a synthetic blend. His mind feels as coarsely fuzzy as the sheets against his bare feet. Strange blanket, strange sheets – he can't even pretend he's at home. The thread count feels appallingly low. What are these, jersey knit?

When he opens his eyes it's to a room that's pretty much the same as the last private hospital suite he'd seen – soft blue walls, drop shade over a large rectangular window, flat screen TV mounted in a corner, firm looking taupe easy chair empty and off to his left side. There are no flowers, but he does have a healthy collection of machines clustered around his bed that he can call all his own.

He's contemplating the geometric design on the drop shade when there's a faint itch high in his left cheek. Lifting his hand to scratch it feels like moving through molasses, but he's not in any real hurry. There's an analog clock on the wall, over the door, but reading it is beyond him at the moment. It doesn't really matter what time it is; he's not going anywhere.

His fingernail snags on something as he scratches; a small line of too-smooth ridges, out of place on his unshaven cheek. Stitches? He rubs a finger pad over them slowly, feeling the slightly puckered skin over the jut of his cheekbone. He tries to probe the inside of his cheek with his tongue and finds he can't – there's no give at all in his jaw. No sensation of clenching, of anything really. He presses his palm against the left side of his jaw and tries to open his mouth but there's zero discernible movement. Trying again results in nothing but a sharp flare of pain in the right side of his face so he gives up, attention already drifting away from these new discoveries and back to staring at the squares on the drop shade, counting their corners and cataloging their shades of blue. He just doesn't have it in him to really care about another set of stitches. Modern pharmacology is a wonderful thing.

He's trying to find a rhyming word for 'benzodiazepine' when a mature blonde woman in green surgical scrubs walks in and picks up a clipboard from the front end of his bed. She flips it open, skims down the page, and pulls a pen from her breast pocket. When she finally looks at him she doesn't seem surprised to see him watching her. There's nothing remarkable about her that he can see but there's also nothing else in the room worthier of his regard. He has no idea where the TV clicker is.

"You're awake," she says, peering at him over the bifocals perched on the end of her nose. "I'm Doctor Edith Karcher. I performed your surgery."

He tries to smile but he's not sure his face is managing it so he gives her a wave of his fingers as back up. It's a sluggish movement that loses even more speed when he watches his hand make it, the ripple of his fingers rising and falling over the blanket, pointer a bit clumsy for the clamp of the pulse oximeter.

"That's the lorazepam you're feeling," Karcher says wryly, moving toward him and laying the pen and clipboard on top of one of the monitors. She pulls a penlight from her breast pocket and leans down a little, her fingers going to his chin to tip his head back. "Look at my nose," she says, so he does while she flicks the light in his eyes.

He's still blinking the spots away as she checks the machines clustered around him and jots notes on the clipboard. "You had a rough time waking up post-surgery, hence the sedative." She pauses to take off her glasses, letting them hang on a jeweled chain against her chest. She clicks her cheap Bic and hooks it back in her pocket next to the penlight, clipboard closed and under one arm. "How do you feel? Thumbs up for good, thumbs down for bad."

Frederick stares up at her, eyes narrowing slowly as his right hand rises equally slowly to point at his face. He overshoots and jabs himself in the face with the pulse oximeter, poking into something that makes a faint crinkling noise.

Karcher's neutral expression becomes more somber. "The damage was extensive enough that your jaw was wired shut to assist the healing. You came in with a partially shattered jaw, which we reconstructed-"

Her voice becomes mere background noise as Frederick's attention shifts to the source of the crinkling sound. He touches his fingers to it, mapping this latest discovery by touch. Fabric, dry, smooth, covering a disturbingly large area of his jaw and neck. And there, on the underside of his jaw – more tiny stitches.

"-Although we had to install a miniplate to stabilize the angle of the mandible and do a skin graft for your neck-"

He's sure he'll feel much more alarmed by all of this later, when the sedative wears off, but for now he's just confused – mostly about how it took him so long to notice. People aren't born with bandages on their faces.

"-Replaced two shattered molars with implants-"

Implants? He curls his tongue, trying to figure out by touch which two teeth are the new arrivals.

"-Finally, some minor reconstruction was done on your left cheekbone and hard palate. Blink twice if you understand," Karcher finishes, catching him off guard. He'd been so caught up in feeling himself out that he'd only caught snatches of what she'd said. He blinks twice anyway; he doesn't want to deal with another recitation. The woman _could_ drone on.

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

He remembers quite a few things that have happened to him – his mother slapping him in a grocery store when he was five, Erin Sinclair laughing at him in eleventh grade when he asked her out, Abel making that first incision – but nothing relevant to why he's lying in this bed with its bargain basement sheets. He flops his hands down onto the blanket and shakes his head in a deliberate one-two side-to-side motion that tugs at his bandage and leaves him a bit dizzy.

"That's normal. Lorazepam is hell on the memory."

He waves that off, rolling his wrist in the universal motion of _get on with it_.

"You were shot, Mr. Smith," says the woman who got second crack at putting him back together again. She seems to have done a better job than the last doctor – this time he's gained more parts than he's lost.

Smith? He files that away for future consideration to focus on the more pressing issue at hand: he was shot in the face. The _indignity_.

"You're in Johns Hopkins," she continues. "You were treated in Virginia last week and came here for reconstructive surgery. Do you remember any of that?"

He sighs, gusting heavy out the nose, before raising his hand to give her a roman's vote of disapproval. Big thumb's down for getting shot in the face.

 

Frederick spends the subsequent weeks flip-flopping between four dominant states: angry (and in pain); worried he's going to die (and in pain); hungry (and in pain); asleep. He usually wakes up because he's in pain. He has yet to see any evidence that he won't spend the rest of his life this way.

He feels thoroughly justified in being angry. He was: a) _shot in the face_ – he will never ever be over this – whilst in FBI custody and b) framed for a slew of gruesome murders. One or the other alone would be enough to upset any normal person, but both together is infuriating to the point of distraction. His ill temper is only compounded by his inability to express it. He knows very well not to yell at the nurses – one never yells at the people responsible for giving one painkillers – and he can't even if he wants to. At most he can make an angry sort of groaning noise; he discovered this after stubbing his toe the first time he got out of bed. His balance is almost entirely out of commission for a week thanks to the lingering lorazepam – having one kidney is extending the half-lives of every drug they give him, which is proving to be quite the double-edged sword.

When the heaviest of those same drugs finally start to clear his system, the switch for the part of his brain that cares flips on and his urge towards self-preservation comes back with a vengeance. He realizes how vulnerable he really is one night when he's watching Law & Order reruns on USA. Hannibal could get him at any time and no one would miss him. Besides the occasional mailed greeting card, he hasn't interacted with his parents in any meaningful way in years; his professional acquaintances far outnumber his friends – for God's sake, most of his casual dining in the last two years has been done with _Hannibal Lecter_. Frederick's probably eaten more people than he could convince to come to a dinner party.

 _No one would miss him_. It's a fact hammered home by what he sees in the newspapers. There are no public defenses of him, no outcries for an investigation into his apparent demise, no op-ed on how ridiculous the mere notion of his being the Ripper is on its face. In fact the news cycle seems to have shifted away completely and "Dr. Frederick Chilton: Chesapeake Ripper" is old news. There are a brief couple of paragraphs in _The Baltimore Sun_ on BSHCI appointing an acting administrator – not his first choice but she'll do – along with the worst possible summation of his life as that rag knows it. It reads like a bad horror movie synopsis. _Failed surgeon turned head of the loonies slaughters dozens, eats corpses, dies in custody, none mourn_. It's enough to make Frederick want to stay in bed all day if he wasn't stuck there already.

There would have been more publicity if there had been a trial. He knows it. Everyone loves a good public trial, and the media has already proven itself incapable of resisting the lure of the Chesapeake Ripper. After the debacle of _United States v. Graham_ the coverage would likely have been even more fervent. Still, he reads the front section every day, looking for any mention of the case, getting as much enjoyment out of the newspapers as he does his current liquid-only diet.

Food is the other source of anxiety in his life. When he's not worrying about Hannibal popping up at his bedside in the middle of the night to carve off a flank steak or two, he's staring down at a cup of liquid hospital food and contemplating the merits of starvation. The drugs, the pain, the taste in his mouth that never goes away, the food itself – his stomach is permanently ruined, he's sure of it. There's nothing more depressing than taking all your meals through a straw.

Hospital life does not agree with Frederick and there's no forthcoming escape from it. He has no ID, no money, and nothing he'd be caught dead wearing in public. His house is a crime scene and his current meager wardrobe consists of sweats, t-shirts, and underwear he suspects came from Wal-Mart – a week into his stay the nurses must have gotten tired of him flashing his ass by accident, or at least that's what he chooses to think. The alternative is that they took pity on him, a possibility he prefers to ignore for the sake of what self-esteem he has left.

But even if he did have more than sweats, a quad cane, and a pair of orthopedic plaid slippers to his name, he's still not sure the FBI would let him leave. The feds can't seem to decide whether or not he's still under arrest; he's not handcuffed to his bed and there's no guard at the door, but every couple of days Dr. Karcher pops in to tell him his "friend" Jack Crawford called to check his recovery. The feds might have arranged for his treatment in Baltimore – hence the business with the assumed name – but the bottom line is that the FBI has left him high and dry. He's effectively hiding in plain sight with no safety net he can see. They saved his life but they also put him in this position; he's torn on how grateful to feel. Maybe 33% grateful.

He has a feeling that number will drop rapidly the moment he gets a look at his bank account and his future insurance premiums. When – if – he ever gets out of here he won't be able to afford to leave the continent. With his luck Hannibal will still be on the loose and Frederick will be reduced to hiding in a shack in Mexico. Johns Hopkins isn't exactly the Four Seasons – a month at the latter would likely cost him less and the room service would be better.

The nurse brings him another cup of soup – greenish, over-salted, thinner than a melted creamsicle and twice as disappointing. 20% grateful, he decides. The other 80% is ready to make a break for it and see if this time the FBI will send an agent willing to shoot him while he runs away.

 

Jack Crawford shows up a couple of hours before he's scheduled to get most – and isn't that a depressing thought, _most_ – of the hardware in his face removed.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Chilton. You look much improved from the last time I saw you." Crawford has brought him flowers – a spring bouquet of sunflowers and gerbera daisies. A little garish for Frederick's taste but the colors are bright and he wasn't raised to be rude. He nods in acknowledgment when Crawford pointedly sets them off on the side table. He doesn't take the chair; unsurprising, as no one who visits ever stays long enough to bother sitting down. Of course all his visitors up to now have been medical staff, but that's no never mind to him.

Hat now in hand, Agent Crawford stands on his right side, smiling down like the magnanimous prick that he is, saying nothing. He looks like he's enjoying the silence.

They'd weaned him off the heavier painkillers so Frederick can actually feel his face for a change; the pain is substantial and ever-present, but his current drug cocktail takes the edge off it while doing nothing about the miserable itch of his stitches. He tries not to aggravate matters, however, and affects a poker face his mother would be proud of while scribbling on the whiteboard the afternoon nurse had given him. He holds it up so Crawford can see: YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP TO ME WITH FLOWERS. I'M NOT YOUR WIFE.

Crawford's smile doesn't fade. "I wasn't aware I had anything to atone for."

Frederick drops the poker face in favor of a hearty glare, pointing up at his face with the business end of the dry erase marker. Crawford _would_ insist on playing the innocent. THIS IS YOUR FAULT.

Crawford shakes his head. "I had no idea Miriam Lass was going to react the way she did. No one could have predicted that."

There are a myriad of things Frederick wants to say in response to that. He fumes, erasing each response more violently with every false start, the squeaking of the marker filling the room. YOU ARRESTED ME; I WAS IN YOUR CUSTODY; SHE HAS ONE ARM. He finally gives up, dropping the board and marker in his lap and crossing his arms so he won't flip Crawford the bird like he so very wants to.

"Doctor, I understand that this is difficult to accept, but what happened was an accident-"

He snorts at that before picking the marker back up and casually scrawling, WATCH WHAT YOU SAY. I'M FEELING LITIGIOUS.

Crawford pauses, leaning back slightly and pursing his lips in consideration.

Frederick's had enough of this social call. His head hurts, his stomach hurts. He wants to go back to never having visitors. He could be watching Ellen right now. WHY ARE YOU HERE?

"I'm here to offer you federal protection."

 **HA.** He thickens the lines appropriately to convey as much disgust as he can.

"As we have determined that you are neither the Chesapeake Ripper nor responsible for the deaths of the two agents found in your home, as far as the bureau is concerned the charges against you are baseless."

Again, there are so many things Frederick wants to say in response to this, like _that's not what you've told the press_. He settles for HANNIBAL?

Crawford turns his hat over in his hands.

Frederick puts the cap on the marker and snaps it into the holder on the side of the whiteboard before setting it carefully in his lap. He's done being grateful; he's 100% ready to run. He beckons Crawford closer, and swallows thickly when the agent leans in close. Crawford's cologne is an almost overwhelming cloud of scents after weeks of nothing but sterile hospital cleaners and perfume-free soap. His headache gains steam.

"Bring me everything I had when you arrested me and I'll consider leaving you a pot to piss in when I sue." For clarity's sake he has to whisper, but Frederick figured out early on into his stay that one could still talk even with one's jaw wired shut.

Crawford shifts to fix an eye on him. "You and I both know this isn't a wise idea. Hannibal Lecter-"

"Thinks I'm dead," Frederick interrupts. He swallows, scratching his fingernails through the whiskers on the left side of his jaw in an attempt to satisfy the urge to rub the right side. He can't decide which he wants to disappear more, Jack Crawford or the taste in his mouth. "And if he didn't then either he would have finished the job by now or he hasn't given me a second thought. I'm not staying to find out which is true. My part in this farce is over; I'm checking out in two days. I refuse to end up barbeque like Miss Lounds." He grabs the lapel of Crawford's coat, not to intimidate but to steady himself, head spinning. Wearing so much cologne to a hospital is downright rude. "Bring. Me. My. Things."

Crawford frees himself easily from Frederick's grip and steps back from the bed, donning his hat. "I'll have them sent over."

Frederick sags back against the pillows, absently rubbing a hand over his blanketed stomach as Crawford walks toward the door.

He stops, hand on the door handle, and says over his shoulder, "Good luck, Doctor Chilton." Then the click of the door opening, the soft _whish_ as it swings closed.

The flowers _are_ almost unforgivably garish, Frederick thinks, staring at them. Maybe one of the nurses will put them in water for him.

 

Frederick stands in the bathroom looking down at the individually wrapped toothbrush he's holding and feels the same apprehension he felt when he first published. He smacks his lips, grimaces, and gets over it, tearing the plastic off with scarcely any difficulty. He uncaps the sampler of Crest toothpaste, peels the circle of aluminum foil off the end, and squeezes a generous amount on the bristles. It's plain white, no fresh strips or blue cleansing swirls or anything fancy and he doesn't care, it's good enough. He's spent the last month getting used to "good enough" – he's wearing _sweat pants_. He turns the tap on low, dips the brush under, and then, nervous again, slowly opens his mouth.

There's a cracking in his jaw like Jiffy Pop on the stove, and he freezes. Karcher had warned him after the surgery that he'd hear it for a while, anytime he really stretched his jaw.

"Just scar tissue popping," she had said. "Nothing to be concerned about, perfectly normal." That doesn't stop him from imagining the plate in his jaw loosening, bits shifting, implants detaching.

Then the scent of mint hits his nostrils and his concerns evaporate. He starts brushing and- Frederick never thought you could enjoy something _too_ much but this might be pushing it. He scrubs away the taste of a month's worth of hospital food and drug-induced cottonmouth and God help him but he might moan just a little when he brushes the insides of his cheeks. Even the twinge in the right side, the tenderness of his gums, isn't enough to put a damper on the occasion. He spits, rinses the toothbrush quickly before squeezing out more toothpaste for round two. He can't remember the last time he got so much enjoyment out of something so undemanding. It's better than going for a Sunday drive with the top down or torturing Will Graham with endless stacks of Rorschach inkblots. The drag of the bristles against the roof of his mouth is possibly, _possibly_ better than the sound of Abel bouncing down all those steps.

Sagging against the counter and bracing himself with one hand next to the sink, he spits one last time, leans forward to angle himself awkwardly so he can drink directly from the tap. Water sprays over his face and he's too busy sucking it down greedily to care, just closes his eyes and swallows over and over. He doesn't stop until his jaw aches and the water's cold makes his teeth hurt; he pulls away, fumbles the tap off and stands up too fast, back popping low and water sloshing in his belly. He's still clutching his toothbrush; he drops it on the counter, plastic clattering.

He wipes the water off his face with his hand and looks at himself in the mirror, shivering in the cold recycled air of the ensuite bathroom. He'd avoided his reflection for the entirety of his hospital stay until now; nothing he was going to see would make him happy, so why bother? But he gawks now, hunching over the sink to get closer to the mirror, turning his head this way and that.

Frederick finds himself a changed man. His eyes stare out from dark-smudged sockets and he's got a month's worth of beard shading hollow cheeks. His face is markedly thinner; of course he lost weight, he's been living an anorexic's dream. The starving hobo look is fixable. As for what's already been fixed...

As he suspected, the damage on the left side is minimal. The actual stitches are still visible, but he knows they'll be gone in another month, leaving behind a shiny line, barely there if he moisturizes. He tilts his head, standing back; it'll be fine. He always did look best from the left.

The right side is another matter. Most of his cheek looks alright despite the swelling from Karcher mucking around with his jaw an hour ago. If someone faces him straight on there's no sign of anything amiss, but it's unavoidable the moment he turns. There are multiple lines of suturing, visible through his whiskers, the stitches themselves delicate and hard to see. He already knew about the line running the edge of his jaw; he can only assume that was from when they had to peel the skin back on his face to fix what Miriam Lass had broken. He shudders; at least this time he was unconscious when someone cut him open.

The skin he can see is still mottled with greenish-yellow bruises in places where it's not pink and raised around the stitches; there's a patch on his neck that's a distinctly different shade than the rest. Frederick frowns, poking it. He'd overheard one of the orderlies call him an assface once but he never dreamed it would ever be close to accurate.

At least the line of his jaw is unchanged – Karcher does good work. He thought – feared – it would be more obvious that he has parts in his face that no human being is born with. It _feels_ more obvious; he rubs his tongue against two new molars as he stands back. Tries a smile but it looks wrong, over-bright – desperate – and he looks away when he feels his expression start to crumble.

Really, he doesn't look too bad considering.

Frederick sighs as he slumps back against the wall opposite the sink, watching his reflection as he idly rubs a hand over his t-shirt-clad chest. Past experience has taught him he's a quick healer. All his scars fade eventually.

And a little Mexican sunshine won't hurt.

 

"...One ballpoint pen, one set of car keys, and a partridge in a pear tree," finishes Agent Zeller. He's the one who lint-rollered Frederick at the FBI lab. Of course Crawford would send these two chuckleheads to return his things. Zeller and Price. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, as Frederick thinks of them when he's being polite.

Zeller braces the paper on his hand and scribbles a quick signature at the bottom before passing it over to Price, who also signs. He's the one who went through his pockets.

He passes Frederick the paper and pen. "Sign here," he says, pointing to a spot below their signatures. It's an itemized list of everything they seized after Crawford arrested him.

He looks down the list. Car keys... "Where's my car?"

Tweedle Dee looks at Tweedle Dum, who shrugs. "There's a lot of red tape," Zeller says in lieu of explanation. His tone says apologetic but his grin says _eat shit_.

Figures. "If there's one scratch on her I will-"

"Sue us, yes, we've heard," Price interjects. " _She's_ fine, Doctor Chilton. The FBI takes excellent care of its impounded vehicles."

"Yeah, real great," Zeller agrees, nodding. "I'm sure those scratches will buff right out."

Frederick glowers at them before turning to the side table to sign, shifting a slim unsealed envelope out of the way. He's not an animal; at least _his_ signature will be legible, unlike the other two.

"Fabulous," Price says when he gets the paper back. He folds the top part along a line of perforation Frederick didn't notice before carefully separating the white top sheet from the rest of the color-coded rainbow, passing it to Frederick and pocketing the remainder. Of course the FBI still uses carbon copies. "Have a nice day."

They're already at the door by the time he realizes what's happened. "That's it?"

They turn as one to look at him. "Yup," says Zeller, like he's simple.

"You're not going to apologize?" He sounds whiny but he can't help it. He _deserves_ an apology.

Price already has the door open when they trade glances again. "You know, we really should make up some cards or something for when this happens," he says thoughtfully.

"What, mistaking someone for being a cannibalistic serial killer?"

"Yeah. Seems to happen a lot."

"Eh. Twice isn't a lot," answers Zeller. Then they're gone. "We'd never agree on the font," Frederick hears him say before the door swings shuts completely.

He turns, paper clutched in his hand, to survey the piles of stuff on his bed and floor. Half of it's still in plastic evidence bags. The envelope on the side table contains his "not _actually_ a psycho killer " credentials from the FBI. The letterhead, the reference numbers, the business card stapled to the front top corner – he knows it all looks very official.

Zeller had handed the envelope over when the agents first arrived, saying, "Here are your papers" in a very bad German accent right before he'd dumped Frederick's bags on the floor.

"Agent Crawford said you might be doing some travelling," Price had explained, choosing, as Frederick had, not to comment on the accent. "I'd suggest you show them this _before_ they strip search you."

As Frederick starts repacking, he considers the odds of an uneventful trip. After everything else that's happened to him the likelihood that he might be cavity-searched by customs agents at the Mexican border seems high enough that he decides to resign himself to it as an inevitability.

Underwear, socks, lightweight pants and cotton shirts, a couple of linen sport coats and even a pair of swim trunks – Hannibal clearly had a sunny destination in mind for Frederick's great escape when he did his packing. Three bags worth of clothing; the man even packed him some toiletries and his vitamins. He shudders at the thought of Hannibal Lecter in his bathroom, looking through his medicine cabinet.

And buried under another bag containing a pair of shoes, clearly labeled in its own plastic baggie: one man's gold ring with brown topaz. Frederick sits down heavily in the easy chair, quad cane standing unsupported before him, pulling the bag open to dump the ring into his hand. His grandfather's ring, the only thing his grandmother had ever given him. She'd slipped it over his finger when he was twenty and she was sundowning, halfway through his explanation of why he didn't think surgery was for him after all.

He realizes with dismay that he wouldn't have remembered to pack it. He would have been in a panic – he _was_ in a panic – when he left his house. He wouldn't have packed complete outfits; he would've grabbed whatever he saw first. He would've been more concerned with running than color coordination.

Frederick slides the ring on his finger - he hasn't worn it since Abel vivisected him. Trust Hannibal Lecter to be considerate, even when he's framing a person for murder.  He gets up and goes to finish packing. He's not sticking around to find out what happens when that consideration runs out. That's for someone else to discover; he doubts it'll be half as tidy as three bags stacked in a front hall and two dead bodies in a kitchen.


End file.
